


Wyvern

by Dusty_Forgotten



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Demons, Dragons, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Romance, Succubi & Incubi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 11:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<i>He has a voice like logs crackling in a fireplace, and eyes stormy as the plumes of smoke that rise from the chimney. His smirk never falls, but his smiles always flash— quick, like a mirror glinting sunlight— perfect teeth, white and straight, but Castiel can’t get it out of his head that were the man to open his mouth a little wider, his molars would be needlepoints all the way back.</i>"</p><p>Alternatively: Coffee shop dragons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wyvern

**Author's Note:**

> This is the longest thing I ever just sat down and wrote, previous record being under 6k.

He has a voice like logs crackling in a fireplace, and eyes stormy as the plumes of smoke that rise from the chimney. His smirk never falls, but his smiles always flash— quick, like a mirror glinting sunlight— perfect teeth, white and straight, but Castiel can’t get it out of his head that were the man to open his mouth a little wider, his molars would be needlepoints all the way back.

His name is Crowley. He’s an investor or broker or something like that; he hammers on about highs and lows and various abbreviations over the phone in the coffee shop where Castiel works, that his family owns. He takes his coffee black, like his clothes, but fills it with so much sugar it’s more of a sludge than liquid, and likes it extra hot. He takes it by the window, and looks out on the city like it bows before him.

He has a distinct smell; Castiel can sense it even over all the coffee. He smells like wildfire: smoky, with a heat that sticks in his nose, and nothing like tobacco. Well, that and Giorgio Armani.

Crowley calls everyone _love_ and _darling_ in that sonorous voice, in an accent Balthazar cites from London, but Castiel thinks sounds more like an echo of Old English— everyone, that is, except Castiel, whom he calls _kitten_ for whatever reason. He inquires one night, because the lines are short this late, and he’s started making double-takes on the street whenever a peacoat flutters.

Crowley smiles daggers as he discards the cardboard sleeve. “Because I could just eat you up.”

He takes his coffee quietly, but Castiel gets the sense volcanoes erupt somewhere in the world every time he moves.

“You like that corporate snake, don’t you, Cassie?” his cousin accuses, sipping his latte at the nearest bar table.

 _Snake_ doesn’t seem quite appropriate, but it’s closer than _human_. “You don’t think he really eats cats, do you?”

“That’s a delicacy in some countries. China, I think. Korea.” He pulls a cream-covered stir stick through the curl of his tongue. “Maybe he’s just worldly?”

“Or an an amateur murderer.”

Balthazar slurps his latte noisily. “Are you going to ask him out, or should I?”

*

They meet up at a downtown steakhouse for dinner, a little late, so they narrowly miss the rush. The conversation’s no more uncomfortable than expected, he chews with his mouth closed, and though there’s no awkward parting because he presses for nothing, he holds Castiel by the back of the neck as they walk to the subway station, and that’s somehow the most controlling thing Castiel has ever experienced from a man.

He kisses Cas goodbye, and he tastes like ash, and Castiel can feel his hand scorching the back of his neck all through the night.

*

Crowley always gets that riddle on the chalkboard— even that time Castiel wrote it wrong and ruined the whole pun, Crowley knew what riddle it was _supposed_ to be, and answered it correctly. _When is 99 more than 100?_ On a microwave, obviously. _What gets wetter the more it dries?_ A towel, of course. _Alone, I am twenty-fourth. With a friend, I am twenty. Another, and I am unclean. What am I?_

Crowley regards the chalkboard intensely, gouging a sharp nail contemplatively through the cardboard sleeve. “I don’t believe I’ve heard that one before.”

“Balthazar found it.” Castiel volunteers.

Crowley pins him under burning irises curiously. “Where?”

“Yahoo Answers.” the man speaks up from his nearby eavesdropping.

“Don’t you have a job?” Castiel retorts scathingly.

Phone in one hand, latte in the other, Balthazar feigns ignorance. “Why yes, actually. I manage a strip club. At _night_. Hence, latte.” He toasts it to the air, and Crowley lifts his own cup in response. A staring contest develops, which Balthazar throws with a wink.

Castiel feels a solidarity has been found, like spotting lesbians and knowing he isn’t the queerest one in the restaurant. “Am I missing something?”

“Per usual, Cassie.” He finishes his beverage, and drops the cup in the trash, clapping Crowley on the shoulder. The sound resonates like a sword striking stone. “If you’re stumped, I believe you owe him some answers. Isn’t that the rule?” Then, to Castiel, “Just make sure you ask the right questions.”

Balthazar leaves, swagger interrupted by a stumble which he seems to blame on Crowley by the glare he casts back, despite being more than ten feet from him at the time. Crowley visibly relaxes with the other gone— though, how specifically, Cas couldn’t say. “I think you’ve got me, kitten.”

“It’s X.”

He scans the chalkboard, assembling the puzzle with the final piece. “Twenty-fourth in the alphabet, ten in Roman numerals, X-rated... Clever.”

“We’ve only had two people correct, and I’m fairly certain they Googled it.”

“Clever indeed.”

Castiel notes the woman appraising the menu. “Balthazar said you—”

“Owe you some answers, yes.” He sips his scalding coffee, smirking as the steam caresses his face like a lover’s breath. “If you have the right questions.”

Up close, Castiel can see small bumps protruding from the centre of otherwise straight-clipped nails; they just _grow_ to points— and wow, do they feel nice on his back. “I’m making meatloaf tonight. Would you join me?”

He cuts Castiel with a grin. “That’s not even a question.”

*

The meatloaf is dry, but Crowley doesn’t seem to mind. He likes his meat overdone and the flavour smoked out, anyway.

“Your cousin’s an incubus.” Crowley says after a forkful.

Cas chuffs. “He’s something, alright.”

“Incubus. Sex demon, attractive and intelligent, never had an STI despite the ridiculous improbability of it?”

He laughs into his meatloaf. “That’s Balthazar.”

“Mhm. Incubus.”

Castiel wants to laugh it off, but the way Crowley says it, so obviously... “You’re not serious.”

“Riddle me this: has he ever had a stable partner?”

“Well, no...”

“Because he’d suck the life out of them. One of his parents is absent.”

“Lucky guess.”

“He was stillborn, wasn’t he?”

Castiel, who had been cornering a hunk of onion, freezes. “...How did you know that?”

His ember-eyes narrow. “But they somehow got him breathing, and he was miraculously fine.” Castiel has to put his fork down; he’s shaking. “Like I said: incubus.”

Crowley takes a bite, casually, and Cas slams his hands on the table. He seems vaguely insulted, but not especially bothered. “There’s no such thing as demons!”

“Bible disagrees.”

“How did my cousin end up a demon!?”

“Parent slept with one. Accidents happen.”

Increasingly deflated, “How could I not know this?”

“If you were a demon, how many people would you tell?”

Castiel looks at his meatloaf, and feels his insides about that twisted up. Crowley raises his brows, waits for another question, and Cas picks at his food instead.

*

Deacons ask significantly fewer questions about what you need the holy water _for_ than Castiel expected. He boils it (because he read an article about E. coli in the font) and serves Balthazar his latte with just a dash of holy water.

“Thanks, Cassie.” He smiles, takes a sip— and gags visibly.

“Something wrong?” he hisses, only barely restraining himself from hopping on the counter and declaring his metaphysical discovery.

Balthazar clears his throat. “Bit hot?”

“Are you sure it’s not too holy for you?”

His cousin eyes the drink in his hand cautiously, and delicately places it on the counter. “That too.”

*

For a demon, Balthazar isn’t very demonic. He’s more like a puppy than a hellhound— especially in the sense that he humps everything.

“I survive off sexual energy, like gasoline. If I were celibate— God forbid— I’d simply... shrivel up.”

“And you’re not a rapist?”

“Heavens, no.” He swears by the Father a lot for a creature of Hell. “That’s very taboo among incubi nowadays, and there’s just no need. _Look_ at me.”

He can appreciate the man, aesthetically. Recalls that one wet dream he doesn’t talk about. “You know others?”

He sips his fresh latte, savours it— the bribe Castiel made to get him out to the back alley on Cas’s break. “Not many. We don’t like to inhabit the same territory when there’s so much to go around.”

“How do you know when you see an incubus?” Is there a secret handshake?

“You just do. I can recognize a demon as easily as a person’s ethnicity.”

“That’s not always easy.”

“Precisely. I’m still never sure if I’m speaking to a sprite or pixie.” Slurp. “Your bed warmer, for example, I couldn’t place until he read that riddle. I thought they were extinct.”

Castiel clenches his jaw to keep it from dropping. “Wh—” he does not stutter, “what about Crowley?”

He aborts a drag of his drink, and gapes. “Hasn’t he told you?”

The barista snaps, fists the demon’s lapels and presses him to the brickwork he’s leaned so casually against. “Who the _hell_ am I dating?”

“That’s not quite accurate, love.” He smiles, pityingly. Sighs. “Providing that sort of information could have me eviscerated in ways the human mind cannot _begin_ to fathom.”

Cas shoves him, shocking the incubus into spilling his latte all down the front of his V-neck. “ _Balthazar!_ ”

“Ask him, won’t you!? He still owes you from the riddle, does he not?”

Castiel thinks he does, and loosens his grip. Balthazar groans, frowning at the stain on his shirt. “I’m sorry.”

He huffs dramatically. “Apology accepted.”

“Do you need—”

“No, no, I’ll just take it off.”

That’s the most disappointed Balthazar has ever been about undressing.

*

Crowley is undressed that evening from the waist up, and working on Castiel from the waist down. This is not how he’d hoped this evening would go— far be it from him to complain, but there are important matters at hand.

“Wait.” he interrupts ruefully, just as the first tooth of his fly comes undone.

“It’s fine, I’ve got condoms.”

“No, not that.”

He hooks the fingers of one hand in Cas’s waistband, and digs the claws of the other into his hip. “And lube.”

Hating himself, Castiel pushes him away. “We need to talk.”

“Exactly what I want to hear before sex.” he says, and sits back on his haunches. “You don’t have HIV, do you? I can’t come unless you call me daddy, you know.”

Cas smiles even as he shoves him with the hand still on his shoulder. “Stop it.”

“Make me.”

His eyes are half-lidded, and burning. Castiel forces himself to breathe, makes it deep. “What are you?”

A blink, fanning the inferno. “Horny. Next question.”

Castiel tackles him, and they’re further down the bed than he thought, because Crowley’s back hits the mattress, but his head has nothing to rest on. He holds him by both shoulders, for lack of lapels, and considers apologizing on instinct. Crowley lets his head fall back, thump against the bedframe. “What is louder than a stone, and faster than a snail?”

Castiel blinks. “Everything.”

“Lives longer than a mayfly, is wider than a nail?”

“Everything, still.”

He grips Castiel’s hips, welting them with his claws of nails. “What flies farther than a dog, is blunter than a sword, more fiery than water—” he cranes his neck, flashes campfire eyes, and Balthazar was _not_ kidding about obvious— “and has a treasure hoard?”

Reverently, feeling very small on top of a man three inches shy, Castiel whispers, “ _Dragon,_ ” before the air bursts around him, a powerful gust that shoves him back on his elbows. Somehow, Crowley’s already on top of him.

They stare, Castiel out of breath despite his inactivity, and Crowley ablaze from the inside. Cas shuts his eyes— flinches— but bares his neck as Crowley leans down, whispers hot, “I’m still hard, if you’re in the mood.”

Twists his arms around Crowley’s neck, one jerk and he’s biting down into the exposed flesh. “ _God_ , yes.”

*

“ _Dragon_ sex, Cassie,” Balthazar stresses, “with a _dragon._ That’s something even _I_ haven’t crossed off my bucket list— and it’s rather near the top, mind you!”

He wipes the counter, like a bartender, for lack of anything better to do.

“Was it hot?”

“Now that you mention it, his body temperature is unusually high.”

Balthazar blinks. “You made my innuendo a conversation safe for work. I’m both impressed and appalled.”

“Thank you.”

The incubus rolls his eyes, and rises from his tall chair to drop a Barnes and Noble bag on the pick-up counter. Cas peeks in warily. “What’s this?”

“The complete Dragonology series.”

He exposes a gilded hardcover, shining red embossing. The plastic jewels are inlaid in cardboard. “This is children’s fiction.”

“It’s accurate.” He shrugs, and steals his latte on the way out. “Also, you owe me forty-seven fifty.”

He whirls on his cousin. “I do not.”

“Sorry, bit deaf. Strip clubs are just so _loud_.”

“Balthazar!” he reprimands, but the man’s already dancing out the store.

*

He reads them. And damn him, he enjoys it, and, well, the information really does line up with what he’s already noticed. Besides, it’s fun to feel like a kid again, studying fairy tales...

“What the hell is this?” Crowley asks, holding up _The Dragonology Handbook_.

Castiel blanches, clinging to the popcorn bowl in his lap. “I can explain—”

“Can you really?” the dragon dares boredly, flipping it open. “...Marsupial dragons, hm? Can’t say I’ve ever heard of that.”

“I take it with a grain of salt.”

“Darling, I don’t think a human can handle that much sodium.”

Changing tactics, he defends, “I was only curious.”

Cas feels he’s swayed the man (beast?), until an accordion of stickers falls out of the book. Crowley cocks a brow at the barista, face flushing like his dignity is circling the drain. He stuffs a handful of popcorn in his mouth, and Crowley smirks as he places the book on the table, and thumps down on Castiel’s creaky couch like a creature twice his size.

“You know,” Crowley says frankly, “you can just ask.”

Castiel glances at him, and struggles to chew the excess of kernels in his mouth. “E’scuse me?”

“Communication is key in any relationship, and we _are_ dating.”

Mouth full, he mumbles, “We are, aren’t we?”

“Last I checked.”

Cas struggles to swallow. “How old are you?”

“Ancient. We don’t keep track.”

“We?”

“Well I can’t be the only one, can I?” It looks like an obvious truth, for the moment. “...Can I?”

“Balthazar thought—” and he still hesitates on the word— “ _dragons_ were extinct.”

“Your cousin is an infant, as far as demons go.” Balthazar is a child as far as mentality goes, too. “He can trace his lineage back to Samael and Lilith for all I care, and I still have seniority.”

“How old are you, exactly?”

“I told you we don’t keep track,” he takes a fistful of the snack, smiling, “but I can say with certainty, velociraptors do not make good friends.”

Castiel lets a much more reasonable portion than his last fall from his fingers, gaping at a man that could be called his boyfriend. “... _That old?_ ”

“That old.”

He decides right then to forgo the movie, because at that admission, Crowley is suddenly much more interesting than any media. “How have you survived this long?”

“It involved a wizard, a demon deal, and a few hundred souls, but here we are.”

He wants to think he’s joking. He doesn’t. Castiel shifts to sit sideways, facing the creature. “Explain.”

He takes a long breath, looks off, like it’s a tedious story, and not immortality he’s talking about. “Dragons aren’t known for their humbleness. Vain creatures, prideful.” That he can believe; Crowley’s got his arm across the back of all three cushions as he speaks. “Lording over their slices of the world, no competition but each other... Then these little mammals crawl out of whatever cave they’d been hiding in. Weak, fleshy. Good snacks, but not much of a meal.” Castiel’s hand pauses in the popcorn. Crowley talks of cannibalism, casually, like Hannibal Lecter minus the puns. “But they make things. Claws on sticks, and hides to cover their own, and they take those shiny rocks we’ve always been so fond of, and make them shinier. We kidnapped princesses to eat them, mainly. They were convenient because they didn’t taste quite as gamey, they carry a lot of those shiny rocks, and tend to stand around on balconies— but we figured out, if we gave them back, they gave us _lots_ of shiny rocks. Nobody cares if you eat a few paupers, long as you leave their bloody sheep alone.”

Castiel imagines himself six hundred years ago, meeting Crowley under very different circumstances indeed. Would Crowley still care for him? Would he devour him whole before finding out? Wait, scratch that last part. He’s already dating a dragon; the thought of vore is too much. “Go on.”

He smirks, and Cas thinks his face used to sit like that— with the corners of his mouth curled up and eyes narrow, maybe smoke trailing from his nostrils. “Proud as we are, we didn’t think much of it. Let them wear their metal skins and brandish their forged weapons, even if they could penetrate our scales, they still had no clue how to fight fire. Wasn’t until the eighteenth century you really got that down.” With that drought in California and mine in Pennsylvania, sometimes Cas wonders if they do in the twenty-first. “Then the crossbow was invented, and I thought, hell, we’re buggered. Maybe there’s something to those little mammals, I should get in on that. So, wizard, demon, souls, shape-shifting.”

“...Shape-shifting?” How articulate of him.

“Just the one form,” he tosses, dividing the pages of _A Practical Guide to Dragons_ easily with a pointed nail, “besides the one you’re seeing.”

The page he flips the book open to is one of the full-colour illustrations, a grand portrait of a storybook dragon with a gem in its mouth and a paw the size of Cas’s biggest skillet. He touches the picture, with more respect than he had given the book before. “What does it look like?”

“Vain as I am, it’s not polite to talk about myself for so long.” Arrogant, anarchist, but old-fashioned when it comes to courtship. “Let’s talk about you.”

Castiel looks at his significant other, a prehistoric creature of myth, and presses down the question of why a man like that is interested in an average barista. He really hopes he’s not an incubus, or something. “You’re ancient. There’s nothing I know that you don’t.”

Crowley cocks a brow. “Can you tell me what hell a groot is?”

“No.” For a moment, there’s a disappointment on his features like Castiel, when he was told dragons weren’t real all those years ago. “But I can show you.”

*

He really likes _Guardians of the Galaxy_.

Castiel promises to show him more Marvel, and their next movie night has Cas skimming his Netflix queue after both _Iron Man'_ s, where he spies _The Fault in Our Stars_. He looks over his shoulder at his boyfriend, stretched out along the couch beside an empty spot Castiel had very recently inhabited. “Can you get sick?”

He gives a warning glare to the movie adaption, and Cas clicks over. “...What does your body do when it realizes it’s sick?”

He lets the cursor linger on _Game of Thrones_. “White blood cells. Antibodies. Fever.” The barista pauses, turns to Crowley where he’s licking his lips. “Right.” Cas turns on the first episode, and flops down on Crowley’s chest; a puff of hot air riffles Castiel’s hair, which the dragon then strokes through.

“Good thing, too. My blood would melt the needles used to draw it.” he whispers, and kisses Cas’s forehead.

The thought is strangely comforting.

*

Castiel’s admiring a print at the Renaissance Faire, and the Chinese dragon pictured. He’s amazed he got Crowley here in the first place, countering the excuse that he’d suffered through medieval times once with the promise of turkey leg; he’s not expecting an answer when he asks, “What did you look like?”

Crowley pauses in appraising a collection of geodes. “Do, kitten.”

“You still do?”

“When I want to. _If_ I wanted to.” He holds up two halves, parts them, and the inside glitters amethyst. “If I could.”

“You’re not making much sense.”

“I did mention the wizard, didn’t I?” His smirk doesn’t falter under Cas’s serious gaze, but he does put the rock down. “I can do it, but I shouldn’t. Witnesses, cameras, all that. Besides, where do you hide a 130 metre dragon?”

Castiel catalogues the number and postpones the mental math. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Scanning the shop, he points out a statuette, less than a foot tall, of a red European (as the book calls it) dragon wrapped around the hilt of a sword. Its eyes are glass, but there’s glitter glued to its wings as an afterthought. “Bit like that.”

When Crowley’s eye is caught by a hunk of quartz the size of his hand, Cas buys the statue, and puts it on Crowley’s dining table. Crowley jokes at Castiel’s redecorating when he hasn’t even asked him to move in yet.

Yet.

*

“You’re stepping on my tail.”

Castiel’s already relocated his foot in a booth small enough to be crowded by only the two of them when he reconsiders the statement. His look of disbelief is met with inappropriate sensibility. He blinks, peels his wedge salad, and adapts as he has to every other nuance of dating a dragon. “Just the tail, or...?”

“Wings too.”

He really tries not to look, and when he inevitably fails, also fails to really see.

Crowley skewers a cherry tomato. “I can show you.” Cas drops his fork, and takes his entree fork to avoid bothering their server. “After dinner.”

The barista nearly sickens himself eating too quickly (to his significant other’s dismay and barely-concealed sadistic satisfaction) and they stand in an Outback parking lot with Crowley’s spit-slick thumbs pressed to Castiel’s eyelids.

“Open.”

He draws away, Cas hesitates, and parts his eyelids, and... There they are. Great leathery wings, in a colour that might be red from the exit sign or black from the night— burgundy, that’s the word. They’re raised, like a threat (like a presentation), but if laterally outstretched, they could shadow the building. As promised, there’s a tail to match, with imposing spines growing gradually more imposing the closer to the body they are, and terminated not in the arrowhead Cas was led to expect, but a simple point. He supposes that’s a lot more realistic.

“Cat got your tongue, kitten? Or are we just awestruck?”

Crowley puffs flame at an irksome gnat, which reminds Castiel to breathe. It comes out a lot like a gasp. “They’re... bigger, than I’d thought.”

“Now when’s the last time I heard that?” He strides forward, lithe for a creature of his size, with wings angling out of the way and tail swinging low as the massive creature stands inches away.

Cas is unafraid.

Crowley touches his face, gently, with a clawed hand, and marvels at how Castiel relaxes into it. He swipes his thumbs over his eyelids, clearing the saliva, breaking the spell. When the barista looks at his dragon, he sees only the man. Well, as human as Crowley ever is.

Cas kisses him, and with closed eyes, he can feel a wing brush his back as it enfolds them.

*

There are blinds beneath the curtains, always closed, and the spaces of Crowley’s apartment are large enough the dark colours don’t make it claustrophobic. He has a vase filled with coins— several, actually— and a jewellry box on the nightstand, with imperfect, unset gems and jewellry he never wears.

“No precious metals?”

“Your definition of precious is rare. Ours is useful.” He joins his significant other, shirt half-buttoned, and scoops a handful of the broken or rusted chains and rings and unpopular pendants. “Gold and silver are soft metals. You can bend them with your bare hands. They’re useless for protection.”

“You laid on it to protect your stomach?” Like in the book.

He drops what is arguably junk back in the jewellry box, and pats his abdomen. “Soft underbellies.”

Cas takes the opportunity to flatten his hand to the other’s stomach where he hasn’t finished with the buttons. “I happen to like it.”

He closes his shirt, and tucks it in unnecessarily violently. Castiel considers going down his pants just to spite him, but they both have work in an hour. He withdraws, regrettably.

“There’s no point hoarding anymore, but, old habits. A human’s back is as vulnerable as the front.”

“Fleshy little mammals.” Castiel empathizes, and catches the flash of arrowhead molars as he smiles before retreating to the wardrobe. “Humans have weak spots. Eyes, nose, neck—”

“Solar plexus, knee, shin, instep—”

“Groin?”

Crowley looks over his shoulder, lacing his tie. “Particularly that.”

He pulls it tight at the throat, like armor, while his unbuttoned cuff exposes his wrist.

*

Crowley swears he doesn’t have a birthday because he was never _born_ , per se— which naturally forces Castiel to make one up.

“Columbus Day?” the dragon complains. “Why bloody Columbus Day?”

“It’s a stupid holiday you’re guaranteed off work. Open your present.”

Feigning humbleness (he’s too vain to refuse gifts), he tugs the ribbon free, and parts the lid from the small box. It’s a wristwatch, fairly standard, not guaranteed to work on the Swiss Alps or the moon or what have you, but...

“Steel.” Crowley rumbles, overawed, and straps it on.

Castiel can’t see his wings because he showered since they last exchanged body fluids, but he absolutely feels the gust when they spread with pride.

*

“Have you ever been married?” Cas asks, eyeing a soccer mom’s engagement ring pressed against a double-shot vanilla nonfat macchiato.

Crowley replies from Balthazar’s table (which he’s sure he had to fight him for, though possibly metaphysically), “Five times.” He eyes his partner, and cocks his head, not in Cas’s avian way, but his own reptilian. It’s smoother, and more loaded. “Don’t give me that look, that’s not even impressive for Miami retirees.”

Castiel takes a cup of milk around the counter, and into the seat his cousin usually inhabits. “Tell me about them.”

He takes a sip, tilts his head back. “Lilith, Ruby, Bela, Lola, Cecily.

“Lilith was an exiled Danish princess. If you think politics are complicated, you should have seen them in the seventeenth century. I had her for a few years, and she died of the flu. Went to the Americas in the 1700s, met a revolutionary named Ruby. We burned a few towns together, she died of cholera before the war started. Caught Bela picking my pocket in London, turn of the twentieth century. Told her I wouldn’t call the Yard if she kissed me, and we shagged in a back alley. She died of old age— which was fifty-nine, at the time. The week before Pearl Harbor I woke up in a Vegas with a certificate of marriage to a woman named Lola. I think she was a showgirl, but I can’t be sure. Then there was Cecily. She was an accountant while I was working as a literary agent in New York. Married in ‘64, and she divorced me in the eighties.”

“Why?”

Winking over his coffee, “She couldn’t take the heat.”

Thank God he wasn’t drinking, or Cas would have blown milk out his nose. He pins a napkin over his mouth, and manages to deadpan half-believably. Crowley shrugs. “Cecily thought I was off my rocker, with the dragon business. Last I heard, she was living in Seattle with a patent lawyer.”

He changes the subject awfully quick. Castiel changes it again. “All women?”

“Well, I’ve always been inclined to all members of the royal family, not just prin _cess_ es, but sodomy was punishable by death for most of history.”

That is a very recent development, now that he thinks about it. Why hadn’t he thought about it? Castiel cradles his cup and looks across the table at Crowley, a prehistoric dragon, a creature who— at least once upon a time— thought of humans as little more than meat, a businessman sipping his coffee, and a man Castiel is in love with. “Why me?”

Crowley pauses with the cup to his lips, looks natural with steam curling between eyelashes. Sets the cup down. “What’s been around for millions of years, but is never more than a month old?”

He answers questions with questions, and Castiel can’t find it in him to complain. It’s like talking to a museum curator, only one older than the artifacts, and for a curious old soul like Cas, he’s ecstatic to have him. “...The moon?”

His eyes soften to a gentle glow as he stretches a hand across the table. Cas matches it with his own, instinctively, and his hands are warm to begin with, but they meet Crowley’s like a coldfront. “ _That_... and it’s no secret we’re partial to virgins.”

Unfortunately, Cas _is_ drinking that time.

*

“Your name.” Crowley answers, sipping his coffee at the counter.

 _What belongs to you, but is used most by others?_ is written on the chalkboard. Cas smiles, and nods. “That’s right.”

His nail’s puncturing an empty sugar packet as he thinks. “I’ve got one for you.”

Castiel perks up. “Let’s hear it.”

“What’s Biblical, beautiful, and I’m unequivocally in love with?”

He breaks it down like any other riddle: three clauses, two broad, the final narrow. Crowley loves stainless steel and Marvel movies, overdone steak and riddles. None of those are Biblical, or even mentionably beautiful. Maybe he’s not speaking as himself, or the answer is in the syntax.

“I’ll give you a hint, love. The answer’s the same.”

Same as what? The riddle? Or the riddle on the chalkboard, or the word _same_ , or something else entirely...? Castiel relaxes his contemplative squint, and furrows his brows instead. “You never call me love.”

“But I do.” he replies, deviously. To other people, or mentally, or does he mean something else entirely?

It’s really too many riddles at once. “I worked a double. I’m afraid don’t have the brain capacity right now.” Just the word _double_ brings up thoughts of flavour shots and percentage milk and espresso-latte-macchiatos which isn’t a thing (he hopes)— and it’s that same woman waiting to make her order with her designer wallet and a flower in her freshly-highlighted hair.

Crowley kisses his eyelid and whispers, “The answer is your name, kitten.”

He takes his coffee, and it takes Castiel a second to open his eyes, but he looks a lot less pretentious for using both the double doors when you can see the wings he somehow fits through there. Castiel turns with a precursory apology, and in the second before the saliva evaporates, he swears the woman has emeralds for eyes and wings like stained glass.

*

A burgundy creature is perched at the pinnacle of a mountain of steel, and Cas dreams himself a medieval prince, a captive only in technicality, that bargained for his life in riddles and now sleeps under a leathery wing.

He wakes yelping with a first-degree burn on his shoulder blade, and Crowley’s trying to apologize, but he can’t stop laughing.

Cas showers first, cold to soothe his shoulder, which weans to only a tender sunburned sensation as he slips his shirt over it.

On the nightstand is _Field Guide to Dragons_ and the included model rests on top, which Castiel was not the one to assemble.

*

Balthazar sips his free seasonal latte leisurely. Swishes, swallows, sighs. “...I’d have to take off work.”

“I covered for you every time you spent the night with a girl.” Castiel persuades.

“Cancel my date on Friday...”

“I bought condoms for you.”

“And Saturday...”

“My stepdad never let me have friends in my room after he found that receipt.”

“That’s your fault for keeping the receipt.”

“For God’s sake, Balthazar!” Castiel musses his hair, and deflates onto the tabletop. “...I can’t do this without you.”

He takes a drag, and smacks his lips. “Say the magic word.”

Wholeheartedly, “Please?”

The incubus looks down his nose at him, and smiles. “Only for you, Cassie.”

He reaches across the tiny table and touches his arm. “Thank you.”

A flurry of cool spring air invades the coffee shop as the doors are thrown open, and Cas hurries behind the counter to wash his hands, as his cousin murmurs, “Perfect timing...”

“Just a second!” the barista calls over his shoulder, working up a lather.

“Take your time.” a voice warm from more than familiarity allows.

Cas smiles to himself, then grimaces when he remembers what’s on the chalkboard. He goes immediately to put a fresh pot on, because Crowley likes that— and to avoid eye contact.

He hears Crowley inhale, slowly. “This is one of two things...”

“We’re a family-friendly establishment.” he reminds, because he bribed Balthazar by writing _What’s in a man’s pants, but not a woman’s skirt?_

“Pockets, then.”

“Correct.”

“Scraping the bottom of the barrel on the riddles, there? Yahoo failing you?”

Contrary to popular belief, Castiel can lie spectacularly. You learn to, covering for Balthazar. “Just trying to trip you up.”

He puts his palms on the counter, leans forward— Cas can feel the heat radiating off of him. “You’ll have to try harder than that.”

“I intend to.” They stand for a moment, staring, daring, and Castiel pecks him on the lips before going off to pour the coffee.

“Aren’t you _adorable_.” Balthazar mocks, already exacting revenge for agreeing to a favour.

Crowley glances him over, unimpressed. “You’re at my table.”

“I’ve been sitting here since the place opened!”

“I’ve been alive since Lucifer fell.”

He freezes, and looks down into his latte, very quietly replies, “Touche.”

“Boys,” Castiel interrupts while handing off Crowley’s over-sweet coffee, “share.”

“I never learned how.” Balthazar niggles petulantly.

Crowley, for his part, seats himself gracefully across from the demon. If his eyes scream _murder,_ that’s Balthazar’s problem.

“You absolutely did. I taught you.”

“Oh, sorry, my memory’s simply awful.”

Castiel stops what he’s doing to tell him just how wrong he is, but Crowley beats him to the punch. “Your memory’s supernatural.”

He gapes, then preens. “It’s got to be better than yours. Those souls keep you from going senile, too?”

Maturely, he drinks his coffee. Castiel’s proud of him— even if his teeth grind.

“Do you even remember the Civil War?”

“Do you?” he bites back.

Castiel once saw an internet video of a housecat that decided to play with a remarkably patient alligator. He thinks that’s what’s giving him the déjà vu.

“Maybe that’s too difficult a question. How about breakfast? Your own name?”

Without reason (well, that Cas can see) Balthazar’s stool is inexplicably ripped from under him. He collapses to the floor, but enough’s gone of his latte it doesn’t spill. “Oh, you prick!”

“Bastard.” Crowley snipes with a sip, but there’s a grate in his tone. Like Sean Connery.

The demon dusts himself off, standing now, and taller than Crowley, even if he were also upright. “Did you just roll your R at me, you bloody Scot?”

“I did no such thing.” the dragon hisses— Oh God, he’s Scottish.

“You absolutely did, you tart! Lord, if you’re Scottish, does that make you a wyvern?”

“Wyvern have two legs. Didn’t you read the book?”

Castiel smiles, downcast to keep from showing Balthazar. Crowley sees, though. That’s what counts.

“I only _see_ two. Arms for wings.”

“Liar liar, Hell’s on fire.” the dragon dares.

“Why’d you leave Scotland?” Castiel presents the first topic he can formulate.

The dragon and demon both stare at him, like he’s the crazy one. Crowley preens for Balthazar, and says, “It was a mess. Bishops’ war, civil war, everyone spoke Gaelic. I don’t speak bloody Gaelic!”

“Don’t you, now?” Balthazar jests in his worst Scottish accent— which is just offensive, because Cas knows he went to Scotland just after he graduated high school, and actually went backpacking through Europe. He should have known he wasn’t human; who _does_ that?

Cas is smacking his hand to the napkin holder to keep them from flying away, and the other scrabbles for the stack of cups as they’re blown around, which he assumes is from Crowley’s wingbeats, and not a spontaneous inside hurricane. “Not indoors!”

He smiles, deviously, carnivore’s teeth, but he covers them with a coffee cup. “Sorry, love.”

Frowning, he gathers the scattered paper products. He can’t stay mad.

“Well,” the incubus barks indignantly, “I best be off. Got to be on time for once, if I want those vacation days.”

“Don’t let me keep you.” Crowley growls.

He gathers his trash and disposes of it, prattling, “I know you’re marathoning Marvel, but if you ever take a break, show this man _The Highlander._ ”

“Goodbye, Balthazar.” Cas farewells, politely enough for both of them. Better than the incubus deserves.

“Cheerio.”

Crowley watches, side-eyed, until the door’s closed. “It’s funny he thinks I haven’t seen it.”

*

“Do you actually remember the Civil War?” Castiel has to ask.

“Which one?”

“American.”

Crowley shrugs a little, hands in the pockets of his coat. “Not a lick.”

The barista bites back a laugh. They’re walking down the asphalt that was once a landing strip, and is now part of a park. Joggers circle the tarmac during the day, but it’s a little before midnight (11:28 on Crowley’s watch), and they’re the only two here. Crowley likes wide spaces like that. Likes the wind on his wings, since it’s doubtful he’ll ever have the opportunity to fly again. Cas can’t imagine; would rather die than lose that sort of freedom.

Maybe that’s why dragons went extinct.

“I slept through it.” Crowley admits. “Hibernated, whole nineteenth century.”

He scoffs. “You missed quite a bit of history.”

“I missed a lot of silly outfits and poor hygiene.”

“That too.”

It’s spring; it should be warmer than it is— but, that’s the weather for you. Luckily, Castiel only needs to lean a little closer and be warm as he would about a bonfire.

“Do you ever, you know, get nostalgic?”

“What, about history?”

“You’ve lived through so much of it—”

“All of recorded.”

“And, well...” he loses the thread partway through the sentence. He’s nervous, tonight— but they’ve got a half mile to walk before he has any reason to be.

“You ever miss your childhood?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t?” And now he’s answering questions with questions— and Crowley’s holding his hand.

“You can’t go back, so... you let it go. I miss people. I miss tumultuous times, when you could get away anything because the government was on verge of collapse. I miss the sky before electricity, and aeroplanes, and satellites...” He stares up at the stars, and Cas knows he’s exhaling from his mouth because of the smoke trail. “But, I do not miss Bubonic Plague and the upkeep on horses. Public transport is the best thing that ever happened to cities. That, and sewage management.”

“What’s your favourite time period?”

“They were all bloody awful. You can idealize things you didn’t live through. 1950s wasn’t all milkshakes and poodle skirts.”

“Lot of sexism.” Castiel supplies.

“Racism.”

“Threat of nuclear destruction.”

“Ghastly interior decorating.”

He bumps his shoulder. “How does the twenty-first century compare, though? There’s so much advancement, but what have we lost?”

“That’s the thing about humanity. They’re always improving. In their nature, that tenacity, and curiosity—” he looks at Cas when he says that one— “keeps them moving forward. Every year is their best.”

“What a time to be alive.” Castiel sighs. He doesn’t feel Crowley tense up, see him bite his lip, but he knows he’s affected, because he’s grown very attuned to the flick of air on the backs of his legs when his tail lashes.

He huffs heat, surveys their surroundings. “Where are we going, kitten?”

Cas walks backwards in front of him, takes his other hand and stops. “Happy anniversary.”

“Oh, bollocks.”

“No, don’t worry, I didn’t expect you to remember.” Crowley thinks on a much larger scale than most people— he’s lived in much larger percentages. The man forgot New Year’s, and completely ignores holidays otherwise. “I wanted to do something for you.” He seems skeptical, fire flickering. “So. Come on.”

Castiel tugs him along, towards the essentially abandoned aircraft hangar, since the airport was closed. He produces a key from his pants pocket, and it slots in the door.

“Wherever did you get that?”

“I may have bribed Balthazar into seducing the security guard.” he admits.

“You cheeky little monkey.”

“I prefer kitten.” The handle turns with a crack, and he finds a lightswitch not far from the entrance. Fluorescent bulbs line the ceiling above them, mostly intact. “He has the better end of the deal, anyway. He’s with him in Boca right now.”

“Lucky dog.” Crowley empathizes, striding into the empty space. “Isn’t this romantic? The cobwebs are a nice touch. You know, some people like flowers, but nothing says _I love you_ like cold, hard steel.”

“Is it big enough?”

“Big enough?” he glances over his shoulder. “Oh, sure, my ego fits nicely, it’s plenty...” He stops, mid sentence, and takes it in. “No cameras, no witnesses...”

“Just you, and me, and enough space for a 400-foot dragon.”

His voice is quiet as he meanders again, but it echoes audibly. “There is, isn’t there...?”

“So,” Castiel speaks up, “will it do?”

“Will it do?” Crowley repeats. “Have I ever told you I love you?”

“In your own way.”

He rushes back, shedding his coat along the way— jacket, tie, watch— all of which he hands to Castiel. “It’s been centuries!”

“I’m excited, and I’ve only waited a year.”

“You have no idea.” he counters in a flurry, loosening buttons as he goes. He turns to the hangar, whirls back on Castiel, and kisses him, like a creature of myth, like a man in love, and hurries back to the centre.

Cas wipes his lip, and smears his eyelid. He’s never seen Crowley’s wings so wide.

“It’s been centuries.”

“What, performance anxiety?”

He eyes the ceiling, spits a jet of flame and watches it fizzle. “Kitten, you know me better.”

“We have all night.”

His wingspan is impressive, but nowhere near 400 feet, stretching and flapping in giddy preparation— and the saliva’s evaporated. “This is the best day of my life!”

“You have a lot to compare that to.”

“You’d be surprised. Nothing much good happened before the popularization of toilet paper.”

“That wasn’t that long ago.”

“That’s humanity, though,” and he’s shouting now, for the distance, “always improving!”

Like that, the speck of a man in an aircraft hangar is bursting, black and red under fluctuating fluorescence. There’s no bodily tearing or dark cloud so the animators didn’t have to CGI the transformation; he’s just there, and then he is larger, and larger, and larger still, like he always has been, like he is simply meant to be, like the 5’9 investment banker was a trick of the light, and how could Castiel have ever been so blind?

He is burgundy, and red where the bulbs haven’t exploded, and black where they have, with two rows of spines along his back, and two black horns sloping from where his eyebrows may have once been, and curling off past the crown. His underside may be black (or else shadowed) plated in what looks to be tissue rather than scales: thousands of them, billions covering his massive form. He’s substantial, but not stocky: long-necked and unnaturally graceful for a creature of that size, but thick in every limb. Powerful.

Castiel is just a man, standing in front of a dragon, and hoping he remembers his name.

His eyes are red— brown— golden, almost— with a bonfire behind them, and it is _alive._

“ _Don’t be shy,_ ” he says in a voice a few dozen octaves deeper, through vocal cords a few dozen feet longer, “ _come see._ ”

Very slowly, he extends a wing, a foreclaw, slowly enough the wind of it doesn’t throw the building apart, and only blows Castiel over slightly. He shuffles forward, one hand extended (the one he doesn’t mind losing), shaking, and he touches the claw. Bone, _huge;_ the flat of Cas’s palm is the size of the point. Cas is the size of one of his teeth.

Crowley’s rested very low, his head feet from the concrete flooring and wings pulled close to his sides. “You... You’re...” He sighs. He’s never seen anything this big. “Wow.”

He laughs, deep in a throat the size of a car tunnel, subdued or he might whisper the door off its hinges. “ _Thanks, kitten. I’d like to think so._ ”

There are a thousand questions dying in his mind. If he speaks impolitely, he’ll be devoured. “You’re magnificent.”

He unfurls his neck, comes closer— and Castiel was right; his eyes are narrows, and the ends of his mouth are crooked. “Incredible.”

“ _Keep going._ ”

“Don’t push it.” he replies with a courage he doesn’t feel, from somewhere deep inside that remembers Crowley’s hand on his neck.

He laughs, a little louder, from a mouth that could fit Castiel comfortably. “ _I do so adore you._ ”

“I love you, too.” Smoke curls from his nostrils, plays at his horns. “You were afraid of crossbows?”

“ _I’ve been shot with one. Hurts like bollocks._ ”

“I’d think it would be like a mosquito bite to you.”

“ _Mosquito bites hurt._ ” he mutters, drawing away his wing, and replacing it with a hand, gently. Castiel grasps the index claw, outstretched, the size of a bodybuilder's bicep, and followers where he is led. Crowley lights down (well, as light as the creature can be; the steel walls flex like thunder) and shifts to his side, shows Cas the pocked mark on his belly where a bolt once penetrated. “ _Like I said, fleshy underneath._ ”

Castiel cautiously lifts a hand, and touches the mark. It’s completely hidden under his palm. “I find it hard to believe something so small was considered a threat.”

“ _Well, it wasn’t._ _By most of us, at least._ ” He doesn’t hiss S’s: he rolls R’s.

Cas strokes the scales; they’re smooth, and hard, make a dull, wooden sound when he raps them.. “You’re a coward.”

Crowley shifts his head around, has to tilt his snout down to see over it. He could kill Castiel with a whisper, a wordless breath, a _sneeze_. “ _I’m alive._ ”

Stuttering, “There’s nothing wrong with cowardice.”

The dragon rolls— Cas pressing himself to the floor to keep from being crushed— but Crowley lifts away before it comes to that point. He could stand comfortably underneath him, but he bumped his elbow on the way down, and doesn’t feel like getting up.

Crowley cranes his neck under himself; Castiel tilts his head back. Red versus blue.

“ _Are you afraid of me?_ ” Crowley asks.

The barista squares his shoulders, even from on his back. “No.”

He inhales, sharply, and Cas scrambles to shield himself. All that comes is a chuckle.

Castiel sits up and smacks him in the general stomach area, however dragon anatomy works. “You’re a jerk.”

“ _If any of us, you’re the one with memory problems. You should know that._ ”

Sitting under a dragon he’s slept besides, Castiel realizes, he should. He rubs his underside as he says, “Of all the coffee shops in all the towns in all the world, I’m glad you walked into mine.”

Almost purring at being pet, “ _Yours was the closest with doors I could get my wings through._ ”

Castiel smiles, brightly, and shakes his head. “I love you.”

There’s a fire inside him that Cas uses for warmth, and the pyre in his eyes looks a lot like a hearth. “ _I’d kiss you, but you’d melt._ ”

“Later, then.” he concedes, stroking him like a lapdog: one the size of Clifford. He loved those books as a child. “...Have you ever seen _Casablanca?_ ”

He rests his chin on the ground. “ _I_ _n theatres, when it came out._ ” Cracking one eye, “ _I know you were quoting it_.”

“We should watch that.”

“ _We should._ ” Crowley sidesteps, and lays on the concrete. The earth quakes under him. “ _Avengers first._ ”

Cas crawls under a lifted wing, and curls into his scaly side, easing into the permeating warmth. “Avengers first.”


End file.
